As the situation currently stands, no. As an issue of race relations in the mainstream, perhaps somewhere between OJ and Rodney King.

People are seeing the effects of institutional racism, but declaring it to be overt or covert racism, which I believe is incorrect and the accusations will just become that much noise. That is, I do not believe any major official has made any decision based on race regarding this crisis. However, generations and generations full of individually innocuous decisions have created a society where most of the time, economic choices are racial choices, class distinctions are racial distinctions.

For example, not spending enormous amounts of money to mitigate risk on a diminishing-returns risk curve, for a city with a median housing price of $87,300 may make economic sense. There's nothing about city demographics in that decision -- yet the consequences of that decision have a significant racial dimension.

Yeah, but more immediately a big step closer to political meltdown in the country. Katrina has already become more a political partisan issue than a racial issue, it seems (not that there isn't a racial component, but the coverage is primarily about the politics, because race debate remains impossible in this country.) To avoid the public recognition that all the politicians let them down, each official is scapegoating others as loudly and rapidly as possible. Usually this blame-fest is played on a national level between the major parties, now we're seeing it between local and federal levels.

I think the anti-big-government movement has been growing for many years now, though mostly in opposition to taxes. It would be interesting if New Orleans becomes to a contingent of urban blacks what Waco is to a contingent of rural whites.

(I try to avoid the word "federalist" because the 18th century term is the opposite of the 20th/21st century term.)

We've seen candidates running on a smaller government platform since at least the mid 90s, but none of them really followed through once elected. I imagine it's difficult to be both part of government and argue for its reduction.

The Libertarian Party is still too full of crazies to be taken seriously. However, there appears to be growing public support for genuine efforts at reducing government intervention in peoples' lives and businesses. Within the Republican Party, a schism between the economic conservative, socially liberal portion of the party from the religious, socially conservative portion seems possible. However, as long as the Democratic Party exists as a "common enemy", they will probably remain united. Depending on how poorly the Democrats do in the next presidential election or two, we might well see a split in the Republican Party into two camps.

more federal government to fix the problems of the sluggish federal government

Yep: "As the destruction of New Orleans has made unmistakably clear, this libertarian doctrine is ludicrous, dangerous and at times all but suicidal."

Interestingly, in the paper version that story ran adjacent to this one, which describes local citizen-preparedness groups. "[G]athering canned goods and extra flashlight batteries may not be enough. And despite a well-rehearsed network of interlocking state and local emergency teams, waiting for help probably won't be enough either."